Every living organism uses energy. This really means that every creature takes energy from something else and converts it. Humans (and all other mammals) eat and breath to sustain life. However, in order to power our machines we require more energy than just that needed to sustains human life. In our industrial civilizations, turbines must turn. In order to do this, a liquid is generally heated or something is burned. This process happens every day around most people that live in industrial countries who don't give the processes taking place a second thought. The electrical power we use, the automobiles we drive, and all other engines we use are powered by a spinning rod.
In the future, we will still use spinning rods as we do today to meet our energy needs. What will change is how we spin these turbines. Coal has been used for centuries for trains and later for electrical power plants. Then we came into the nuclear age and used radioactive decay to boil water to turn turbines. Now we use wind and water as they did a hundred years ago to spin wheels to grind sugar, but now we use this energy to feed our electronics. We have been damning up rivers for the last century for power and now we are creating large farms of wind mills. Tomorrow, we will be submerging even larger turbines deep into the ocean where there are consistently strong currents.
In fifty years or so, we will start to replace our turbines with solar power on a massive scale. We will have massive arrays of solar panels in orbit to provide massive amounts of energy. This will eventually provide the world with most of its energy, however since the arrays will be owned by one or two entities, communities will want to supplement their energy needs with underwater turbines, wind mills and lightning energy.
Our transportation will continue to be hybrid and the Prius will be remembered as the first. However, future transportation won't rely on petroleum or diesel or any other type of liquid natural gas - that will get too expensive and be reserved solely for the manufacture plastics. Future transportation will rely on hydrogen fuel cells, electricity supplied from terrestrial roads and solar power.
Why not petroleum? There are numerous reasons: it pollutes our environment, costs energy to obtain, is used in the manufacture of synthetics and building material, it will become illegal to run an engine with it. There will come a time when the Middle East will be known not for how many barrels of crude oil they can provide, but for how many tons of prefabricated plastics they ship. Ton for ton, raw plastic sells for more than raw crude or even petroleum. Since we rely on plastics for much of our light weight equipment, burning the oil that would have been otherwise used in the manufacture of plastic will become illegal. Since it is cheaper to ship plastic and burning oil will be illegal, plastic will start to be manufactured on the site of the oil drilling platforms whenever possible.
Clean energy? Not exactly. There will still be drilling for liquid gas which has impact. Large solar arrays may block sunlight over earth for periods. Nuclear power will still be used. Large ocean turbines are sure to kill some sea creatures if they spin fast enough. Recycling plastic produces ozone gases. The disposal of chemicals used in printed circuit board etching process and integrated circuit chips are very hazardous.
I believe that this forum will help me with my writing in a couple of ways. Firstly, it will help me get the documents that I have prepared on this subject off of my computer which i think will help to better preserve them. Second, it will give me the incentive to make much needed spelling and grammar corrections to them. As I hope to present a bit more than 'fluff' - what an english teacher referred to writing that I think she would have preferred to call 'crap' - and something that people might enjoy reading versus being turned off by countless grammatical and spelling errors (as I often am when reading well thought but poorly written articles. Third, I would hope to get *thoughtful* feedback.
I think that my third incentive needs a bit definition when concerned with the loose term thoughtful. I don't expect Hubble, Dirak, Einstein, Newton, or Galileo to be reading my writing - as they're dead. Though, I doubt that Hawking, Tyson, or any other - still alive - great minds to read my work. What I would expect is that if you wish to give me feedback, you abide by a couple of 'rules', so please:
Last, the pictures on the slide show may or may not have been taken by me. Most were taken on family vacations and since we only had one (fairly) high end camera - the talented photographers that we all are - had to share. So I can't say which of these pictures I took and which I didn't (unless I was in it - and that is rare).
I think that my third incentive needs a bit definition when concerned with the loose term thoughtful. I don't expect Hubble, Dirak, Einstein, Newton, or Galileo to be reading my writing - as they're dead. Though, I doubt that Hawking, Tyson, or any other - still alive - great minds to read my work. What I would expect is that if you wish to give me feedback, you abide by a couple of 'rules', so please:
- Say more than five words - "You're an idiot" "Love your writing" - I DON'T CARE
- Unless you are pointing a unbiased and blunt untruth I have stated, take more than five minutes to think about what you are saying.
- Make your point and be done with it - don't keep reiterating a point you've already made, don't put incessant carriage returns (aka - 'enter') like a teenage chat room.
- Don't type everything big and bold, small and blending in with the background, or using all caps.
Last, the pictures on the slide show may or may not have been taken by me. Most were taken on family vacations and since we only had one (fairly) high end camera - the talented photographers that we all are - had to share. So I can't say which of these pictures I took and which I didn't (unless I was in it - and that is rare).